CIA DIRECTOR TELLS PELOSI, C’MON, STFU: Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA yesterday of lying over what it claims to have told Senate leaders in a 2002 briefing on “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and today the CIA Director, arbitrary Bill Clinton political operative Leon Panetta, responded that no, the CIA did not lie. There is a MAJOR SCANDAL here: various high-profile political figures are making efforts to defend either themselves or their institutions! [NYT]

About the author

Jim Newell is Wonkette's beloved Capitol Hill Typing Demon. He joined Wonkette.com in 2007, left for some other dumb job in 2010, and proudly returned in 2012 as our "Senior Editor at Large." He lives in Washington and also writes for things such as The Guardian, the Manchester paper of liberals.

You just don’t fuck with the CIA like that, no matter who you are. Ask JFK, or Nixon, or Nancy Kerrigan.

magic titty

We must . . . incinerate them.

SayItWithWookies

[re=318098]ChernobylSoup[/re]: Or those people they tortured. Oh, wait.
Salvador Allende, also. Although the jury’s still out on that. He might have committed suicide by shooting himself 29 times. In the back.

51dimes

[re=318104]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Skills. He had them.

4tehlulz

[re=318098]ChernobylSoup[/re]: But not Bob Novak.

magic titty

[re=318104]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Why don’t they just disappear Nancy Pelosi and make everyone happy?

ph7

Well played, GOP. Somehow you managed to direct attention away from the GOP’s love of torture to the sideshow of wathcing Nancy Pelosi finding a flaming bag of shit on her doorstep, which she prompty started stomping on instead of just closing the door and going back inside.

Now her leg is on fire, and everything smells like shit.

TGY

I know you’re workin’ for the CIA
They wouldn’t have you in the Maf-I-AY!

SayItWithWookies

Oh, and Charles Asshammer wrote a few hundred words of complete babyshit torture apologia today.

To summarize: remember how the tobacco companies, when first sued for causing cancer, defended themselves by lying and saying there was no evidence that smoking causes cancer? Then after that eventually fell apart, their next defensive tack was “Well everybody knew for years that smoking is addictive and causes cancer — why the hell didn’t you listen?”

His essay takes sort of the same strategy: Everybody knew we tortured people (because we were completely open about it, of course). Why the hell didn’t anyone object when it was happening? He’s an idiot. His problem, though, is that he thinks we’re all idiots too.

norbizness

Look at her; she doesn’t remember what flavored mush she had for breakfast.

hpwilliams

Why is this becomming the central issue? I will take it at face value Madam Speaker lied about what she knew about the CIA techniques, this is 7 years after ther briefing. Ok lets burn her down.Is this a legal issue? Politicians lie all the time.

First lets proscute the ones who ORDERED and DID the torture. Then lets deal with this crap once we know what was done.

Hey! I clicked through and read the stupid memo, and I humbly and respectfully disagree with the distinguished (distinguished, dare I say, on Senatorial level of distinguishment) editor’s opinion.

The Panetta memo said it was not the practice or policy of the CIA to mislead Congress. That is not the same as saying that it in fact did not mislead in this case.

In other words this is even weaker than your garden variety, vulgar, nondenial denial -this is a nondenial by indirect implication, denial. This is a very rare ocurrance of such a beast, but IMHO a beautiful specimen which political bullshitologists will study for years.

Therefore, a more appropriate reading is “CIA is guilty, but its not my f******* problem since it was on my f****** watch. So I wanna see asses and elbows around here and nose fragments on grindstones around here, OK?”

I am not qualified to determine whether it was also a message from Panetta to his CIA worker bees to STFU, but I am sure a specialist can determine the issue.

However, Wonkette is correct that Panetta is an arbitrary political operative.

magic titty

[re=318131]Guppy06[/re]: I feel like this *debate* is torturing me, so yes, we must return the favor.

paintitblack

Yeah, ok, Nancy pointing the bone is distracting from the real issue that torture happened & most likely the CIA knew/agreed/directed how to do it. But geez, really: the CIA never lies? Pull the other leg, please.

queeraselvis v 2.0

As my mother, a true Southern steel magnolia with a heart of gold and a smile that would melt butter, would say to all parties involved: “Bless your hearts, but all y’all need to shut the f*** up.”

lmj

And I agree with the very perceptive Wonkette commentators that this whole Pelosi knowed or not issue is trivial BS, and an obvious and pathetic GOP ploy. Which means of course that the idiot press will eat it up, and poor little Hopey will have another excuse to be very conveniently “prevented” from doing anything about the real issue -the US did stupid, illegal, immoral, counterproductive, torture.

Man, who needs the Daily Show anymore?

Nerdalicious

[re=318128]hpwilliams[/re]:
Yup, the Rethug Rove sidestep, I think for him alone Texass should secede. I sense Miss going on a long junket to Azerbaijan with the lovable Joe Biden for about 6 months on a goodwill tour or some such. We luv you Joe! This reminds me of the desperate thralls of the Rethugs in the ’90’s. All the Whitewater nonsense that grad students at MIT couldn’t understand, and that poor guy that committed suicide. This is the vortex we’re in now. Smokescreen, nonsense, smokescreen, repeat,as Rush Sarah Bachmann embarrasses the crap out of the secessionist teabaggers. Oh, o.k., the Democratic Socialist Party ridiculousness didn’t work. If this is their Watergate I could scream laughing. (Don’t forget to keep Health Care away from poor little sick kids while you’re flame baiting in a desperate attempt to save the scraps of your non-party from completely disintigrating)

Come here a minute

If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today
He’d be gunned down cold by the CIA.

lmj

I can’t find the twitternalysis on twitter. Why oh why did I trust Wonkette to not mislead me?

rev_matt_y

[re=318128]hpwilliams[/re]: Seconded. Absolutely the Dems in Congress who knew about it and did nothing should be taken to task as well, but not until after those who ordered it and to a lesser degree those who carried out those orders face the courts.

Hooray For Anything

[re=318154]lmj[/re]: If only the White House/Press Circle Jerk happened this weekend instead of last weekend so the press would have Wanda Sykes to kick around instead of Pelosi. If the Democrats were smart, they’d put MoveOn.org or Sean Penn on their payroll and pay them to say something stupid to distract the press and the dimwits at Fox whenever something bad news comes out.

RoscoePColtraine

[re=318118]ph7[/re]: HaHa, that is one funny way of looking at this! Seriously, though, would we not now sacrifice Madam Speaker to the smoking volcano in exchange for seeing Bush, Cheney et al doing the perp walk? Imagine the satisfaction of seeing them all pronounced guilty and put away. Jesus, I sound like a freeper, but it feels so good right now.

RoscoePColtraine

But do the pugs not realize that if she is revealed to be involved in some dark, sinister way, it only means that the Bushies were violating the fucking law??? This road doesn’t lead to a green pasture for them. Good god, they really are stupid as shit.

Gorillionaire

NYT article does not say what the wonkette headline says it says.
Have we…slipped beneath contempt?!?!?

lmj

Agreed, Dems need somebody to go on the air and attack.
All this he said she said stuff is BS compared to, like, the future of the country and other little details, is all.
Need investigations and go after anyone in either party who is culpable.

Lincolns pissed

[re=318118]ph7[/re]: Thanks…we are still working on the “ole exploding string of pearls thing” to make her go away but the boss says its too obvious.

Lincolns pissed

[re=318163]Nerdalicious[/re]: Dont worry…you will have a lot of material after the 2010 mid terms….

terninjapaneez

When do we get to host celebrity waterboarding for charity? How delightful!

The CIA did indeed NOT lie? Pull my finger!

lmj

There are domestic law statute of limitations issues for some of the GOPers on this, sheeples. That is a big reason for their effort at this nonsense, I think.

Not sure about statute of limitations for international law, but I guess they figure that will never happen and don’t care if it does. The GOP crowed is more of a dipshit beer drunk at Salton Sea bunch than a Spanish Riviera crowd.

Pelosi is not so worried since I think if she was involved, probably not convictable, and she figures her political career will survive -though I do not care so much whether it does or not.

Torture them all, that will get the truth. Menacing, bullying, violent, idiots on my teevee says it works, and I am scared. Huckleberry Graham, the corrupt idiot Senator, says its OK then.

sevenrepeat

it looks like she has some serious fisting power. i wouldn’t mess with her.

gurukalehuru

I, for one, would not object at all if we threw Nanny Botox under the bus, if it would in any way make that bus go a little faster down the freeway of war crimes prosecutions.
She screwed us when it counted most. She is unforgiven.

Oh, and congratulations, Bristol!

zhubajie

[re=318131]Guppy06[/re]: I’ve long advocated having every member of Congress trampled by drunken elephants. Maybe we can borrow the Collosseum or the Circus Maximus from the Romans.

Zhu Bajie

washingtonian

Nancy is in trouble, because she appears to have lied about waterboarding. There will be others, but she is going to take the fall for it, and she deserves to.

Love the Repubs calling for an investigation of what happened in the Intel Committees, and just there. Does anybody who has been in this town for more than two weeks believe that any investigation would be limited to just that?

So let’s have an investigation, and let’s get at anyone who authorized or enabled the torture (oh, sorry enhanced….).

zhubajie

[re=318169]Come here a minute[/re]: He was killed by the Roman equivalent, in reality.

Zhu Bajie

zhubajie

[re=318217]lmj[/re]: The torturers think they will just stay in the US and be safe from Spanish prosecutors, etc. But there are lots of potential bounty out there. Bush might be hard to pick up, but I suspect that Rumsfeld and Condi could be captured and “renditioned” rather easily in 5-6 years.

Zhu Bajie

zhubajie

[re=318281]washingtonian[/re]: Who will be the investigators? Not other congresscritters, surely?

Zhu Bajie

washingtonian

Oh no. I’m thinking truth commission. It may keep some people from getting prosecuted, but in the end we’ll get back a country that believes in the rule of law.

Though, I do like Chris Matthews idea of letting Patrick Fitzgerald investigate it. Or the woman who is investigating Rove.

To your point, if it’s political, it will die.

prophet1195

And Bush is in his bib at the ranch trying to figure out what flavor LSD Cheney gave him this morning.

Jukesgrrl

[re=318128]hpwilliams[/re]: Yes, Republicans move every issue to Step 5, when Steps 1 and 2 haven’t even been agreed on. And it works for them, so why wouldn’t they keep doing it?

And as for that “CIA never lies to Congress” meme, it is correct. They would never lie to them, they would just kill them.

rocktonsammy

Barry HO has this in his master plan, he gots to get rid of that bitch.

assistant/atlas

I’m sorry, I must’ve missed something. Remind me again why the scandal is when and what Nancy Pelosi was told and not what was actively promoted yesterday by Cheney?

lmj

assistant: its about who has the kooties.

Bruno

[re=318430]assistant/atlas[/re]: I’m with you dude, this is just a bunch of annoying noise. Someone should just tell us who to lynch or waterboard or something.

schvitzatura

[re=318274]gurukalehuru[/re]: I got just the guys for the job (inside, that is), and they’d both score lucky bonus rainbow unicorn-scented gold stars by instigating just a purge:

The duo of Jimmy Webb and the bright, shiny, newly-minted Dem, Arlen Specter.

Jim would move up the leadership ladder and Arlen would cement his progressive bona fides by taking down the Botoxian Empress Dowager of the HoRs.

Arlen is big on show trials, I hear…

Was Reid briefed on this morass of horse apples? One can only hope…

schvitzatura

[re=318299]zhubajie[/re]: See <a href=”javascript:reply(‘318500′,%20’schvitzatura’);” above, it’ll come out of the other august body on CapHill

Go Figure

Pelosi told about them lying and they are calling her a liar for calling them liars, while they all lied to the entire country?
This just in: Cheney says Bush knew so he lied!